


river fortunes

by crackthesky



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Insecurity, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-02-23 08:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23508433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackthesky/pseuds/crackthesky
Summary: you know that someone like Jaskier would never choose you.  would never even look at you.a midsummer crown changes everything.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Reader
Comments: 26
Kudos: 145





	river fortunes

Jaskier finds you by the riverbank just before midday. You’re bedded down in the lush thickness of summer clover, sprawled indolently across the verdant carpet. “Ah,” he says, settling down next to you. “A four-leafed clover amidst the cloverbeds. How lucky of me to find her. Blessed for the rest of my days.”

You snort, shading your eyes so that you can peer up at him.

He grins down at you, his smile almost as bright as the sun that outlines him. “Too much?”

“You’re ridiculous,” you tell him. You consider reaching up to sweep his chestnut hair back from his blue, blue eyes. Lapis eyes, Lidka calls them, because she is a merchant’s daughter through and through. She’s wrong, you think, but you hardly intend to tell her that Jaskier has eyes like a lake, the type of clear blue of a mountain spring, something fresh and pure. You know when something is out of your reach. 

“So you keep telling me,” he says. “And yet it barely touches on the words you deserve.”

You roll your eyes. “Shut up, Jask,” you say, shoving at his knee. “Don’t tease.”

Something passes over Jaskier’s face. It reminds you of a stormcloud on a summer afternoon, rolling through the sky to blot out the sun, swollen grey with rain. It passes like a summer storm, too, and that starlight smile of his blooms again. “I would never, dear heart.”

“Mhmm,” you say, letting your eyes drift closed again. 

“Gods, has Geralt infected you? It’s bad enough trying to get him to use his words.”

“You use enough of them for both of you.”

“I use them much more prettily than he would!”

“S’true,” you murmur. “You use them more prettily than most everyone, though.”

The summer breeze stirs; it carries the scent of the season with it, soft grass and wildflowers, woven together into a fragrant bouquet. Beneath it all, the earthy tang of the soil, freshly tilled for summer sowing. The scent is not the only thing the breeze carries. The wind brings you the muffled joy of children, frolicking through the fields, and the steady song of a choir of hammers.

You roll over onto your belly and squint up at Jaskier. His cheeks are petal pink, the faintest hint of a flush coloring his skin, and you wonder if the heat is getting to him despite his open doublet. He reaches out and plucks a clover from your hair with his long fingers, the touch delicate.

“What, darling?” he asks, leaning close and teasing another clover from where it’s caught in your hair. The sun catches on the curve of his cheekbone, kisses soft against his skin, and you are frozen, a deer caught unawares, tail flicked high with nerves. 

Darling, you think darkly. How unfair he can be, all without even realizing it. Women like you do not often hear anything but their name, and Jaskier seems to say everything but yours. You wish he would realize that sometimes it feels like scraping your knee against a river rock, to hear his smooth voice say that to you, knowing he means nothing by it. 

Jaskier makes an inquiring noise, something soft and fluting, and you shake yourself out of the cobwebs of your thoughts.

You peer at him. “Are you trying to get out of building the summer shrines?”

“No,” he gasps, one hand flying to his chest. “How could you think such a thing?”

“Why else would you be out here with me?”

He blinks. “Why would I be anywhere else?”

You scoff. The clover crunches beneath you as you roll onto your back again. “Nevermind.” Why, you think. Why do you always ruin things, why do you open your mouth. Sometimes you think it’d have been better if you’d taken a vow of silence, had kept yourself from inflicting any attempts at conversation on unsuspecting folks. It’d be better than having them lie to you.

A hush falls, broken only by the far-off sounds of the village and the river’s quiet hum. You tear at the clovers beneath your hand, rip them up one by one as you squirm. Jaskier shifts beside you. You close your eyes again and tilt your face towards the sun. It is easier than being blinded by Jaskier’s light.

The bard sighs. He nudges closer, his thigh a warm streak of heat against your side, and you crack an eye open. His focus is solely on his lute, his eyes - the blue of the midmorning sky, deep and rich - trained on the strings. Better position to play, you think, nothing more, just another nip of unintended cruelty. 

“Did Geralt tell you about the harpy?” Jaskier asks softly.

“Geralt speaks?”

The laughter spills from Jaskier like fine wine: everflowing and delicious. You gulp it down greedily, wishing your belly were a wineskin, so that you could carry some for later.

“You make an excellent point,” he tells you. “And how perfect. I’ve been waiting for a captive audience to test the tale on.”

The smile on your lips crumbles into dust. “Of course,” you tell him. “Go ahead.”

Jaskier launches into the story, tells it with twists and turns and beautiful flourishes, his voice a calligrapher’s pen. You listen intently, determined to be of use to him, knowing there is nothing else you can offer him. He spins his tale like a magic thread, spins Geralt’s exploits from straw into lustrous gold, makes the Witcher’s effigy something that is much more difficult to burn. 

After he’s done, the two of you fade into idle chatter. You know you are boring him, can feel it in the way he shifts against you and the way his voice catches here and there, but you cannot help yourself. Finally, you fade into quiet and let Jaskier fill the hush with his lyrical voice. Beneath the sun’s warm kiss, you ride the edge of sleep.

“What does your crown look like?” Jaskier asks, his deft fingers plucking at the strings of his lute. Even his half-hearted chords meld together prettily to sweeten the air with their song. 

“What crown?” you ask sleepily. You’re sundrunk, now, adrift in time, lost in a haze of heat and in the sweet perfume of the clovers. Sometimes you think the sun’s kiss will be the only one you ever keep. 

“Do you have multiples?” he says, his voice laced through with laughter. “Your Midsummer crown.”

That washes over you like river water, runs cold over you like snowmelt.

“I don’t have one,” you say tightly, pushing yourself upright. You curl in on yourself like a nautilus shell, pull your chest snug to your knees, as if the arc of your spine can shield you. You’ve never made a Midsummer flower crown, could never bear to have the river whisper to you what haunts you in the dark of the night, what you hold in your heart. You’ll be alone, you know, plain little thing that you are. The river will carry your crown all the way out to the sea, and all of your prospects with it.

“What?”

“I said I don’t have one,” you bite out. “There’s no point.”

“Darling,” Jaskier says, his voice downy soft, “what in the godsdamned world are you talking about?”

“I don’t need the river to tell me my fortune,” you hiss. “And I don’t need it to confirm what I already know, that no one will want to catch it, that I’ll be alone.”

Jaskier wraps a large hand around your arm. He tugs you to face him, shows that hidden strength of his that had so surprised you all. Geralt makes him look small, but he is hardly delicate. “I would catch your crown, darling,” he tells you. That flush is back, peonies blooming pink across his cheeks. 

The tears pool hot in your eyes before they spill over like rainfall, sweeping down your cheeks like a summer storm. You pull free of Jaskier’s grip and push yourself to your knees. “Don’t,” you say, chest heaving. “Don’t say something like that out of pity, Jaskier, that’s not fair.”

He gapes at you. You scramble to your feet, ignoring the grass stains bleeding across the front of your skirts, and wipe at your eyes. 

“Darling,” he starts, and he is pushing to his feet, and you cannot take it, cannot take platitudes from a silver-tongued bard. Perhaps he’d thought it kind, to offer to catch your crown when no other would, that it would give you a chance to take part in a tradition that’s always scorned you. Instead, it reminds you of what you have always known - he is kind because he knows that you are to be pitied.

You stride off towards town, wiping at your eyes with a rough sleeve, and when Jaskier calls your name, you start to run.

* * *

“You’re such a godsdamned fool,” Sabina says, but her harsh words are gentled by the soft stroke of her hand across your hair. “The bard’s mad for you, everyone knows it.”

The two of you are tucked away in a patch of sunlight in a small copse near the river. The festival is blooming to life like a wildflower, cheers and music starting to lift to the sky. You’ll join them soon, you know, though you can barely stand the thought of it.

“That’s not true, Sabina,” you say.

She takes your cheeks between her work-rough hands. “He wrote you a song,” she says, her mahogany eyes flickering over your face.

The tips of your ears burn hot. “He didn’t,” you protest. “He wrote a song about the village!”

“Godsdamned fool,” Sabina mutters to herself, releasing you to throw her hands up in the air. She runs her fingers through her silvery curls. “Does the village have ‘a sunrise of a smile, lips that guide you to the warmth of day, a beginning unfurling across the horizon like a kiss’?” 

“Those aren’t the words.”

“They very much are the words, I’ve just taken out the fluff in between.”

“Sabina, please,” you say, feeling the tears begin to prick. “Jaskier could never see someone like me as anything like that.”

She cups your face again, leans in to press her forehead soft against yours. “He can,” she murmurs. “And he does. Have you ever seen him sit at the riverbank for hours with any other woman? He asked you what your crown looked like because he wanted to dive for it, you ass.”

Sabina’s Midsummer crown is irises, you know, the deep purple of a fresh bruise to sit dark against her silver strands, and men will dive for it, will dive deep into the cold for the chance to place it dripping back on her head, to have the river bless their courtship. 

“He didn’t mean it like that,” you say through numb lips, because - because you’ve heard Markus ask Lidka what flowers made up her crown, heard Iwo beg Tosia to use something unique so he knows which crown to pluck from the river’s fingers. Jaskier couldn’t have meant that. Not for you. You’ve never heard anyone ask about a crown for mere conversation, but - he couldn’t have meant that.

The sound that issues from Sabina would not be out of place in a filthy bar. But she knows you, grew up running in the streets with you, wove Midsummer crowns with you when you were both still far too young to actually sail them down the river, and she can see the crack in your stone. “He did,” she says. “He does.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say helplessly. “I didn’t make a crown.”

“I know.” She presses a kiss to your cheek. “Maybe next year.”

It’s for the best, maybe. Next year, Jaskier will be long gone, traipsing through the Continent. And Sabina’s confidence is not yours. She’s always been persuasive, always been able to convince others of her ideas. 

“Come,” Sabina says. “It’s Midsummer.”

You follow her out onto the meadow that hugs the riverbank, into the flood of sunlight and cheer. 

You dance, and laugh, and chase the children through the tall grasses, through the rolling fields of clover. The summer shrine sits regal in the distance. You think Geralt might be there, his broad form barely visible. 

You stay with the children when the others flock to the river. Sabina plucks one of her irises from her crown and tucks it into the laces of your bodice, her deep brown eyes kind, before Anatol scoops her up and carries her off. The children dart about the meadow, barely minding you, which is fine. It’s Midsummer, and a festival, and also - you’re not sure why anyone thought you could corral them.

One of the older boys finally takes the other children in hand and guides them to a safe spot nearby in the meadow to play games. You sigh and flop back onto the soft bed of the clovers. The sun feels like a blessing against your skin, soft and warm, a lover’s kiss. You bask like a cat, stretch out in the sun, pillowing your head on your hands.

Eventually, you hear soft footsteps. The children are still howling in the distance. The footsteps slow, and then there is darkness cutting through the warmth of your sun. You open your eyes, pushing to yourself to sit upright, and go still.

“Hi,” Jaskier says. He’s soaked, his clothing clinging to him. Every inch of his wiry frame is outlined by it, and gods, he’s delicious, lean and hard with traveler’s muscles. The water drips from his pink lips, trickles down to his chest, beads in the thick hair there. You swallow. 

“You dove for someone,” you say. The words creak out of you like an unoiled hinge.

There’s a flower crown hanging limp in his hand, dripping wet and sadly ruffled. He kneels not far from you and meets your gaze. Sometimes you think you have never known blue before you met him, before you saw his eyes. “I did.” 

“Who?”

“You didn’t have a crown,” he says softly, raising the crown and presenting it to you, “so I made you one.”

It’s a crown of peonies, fluffy balls of petals pearl pink like the dawn. The petals are layered like ribbons over themselves, an unfurling promise of summer, and the soft color of them is all the softer against the hint of verdant green stems. And tucked in between the peonies like secrets, buttercups bloom gold, shining in the sun. 

“Oh,” you say. 

Jaskier shifts. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know. That you thought - that you thought I pitied you when all I wanted to do was slow down every moment with you, so that it could last through the ages.”

You make a small, hiccuping noise. It feels like there are words stuck in your spasming throat.

“It was never pity,” Jaskier says. “It was always so that I knew which crown to dive for.”

You reach out to touch the edge of a peony, let your finger trace over the delicate petal. It’s soft against your fingertip, even with the river’s chill still clinging to it.

“It’s yours,” Jaskier says. “If you want it.”

You draw back. Jaskier pulls in a tight breath. His eyes are like tidepools, deeply blue and glinting in the sun. 

“I think I do,” you breathe. “You mean it? You aren’t -”

“Never,” he says. “It’s yours.”

“Alright,” you say, your pulse thundering like hooves, beating deep in your veins. You think you can hear your heartbeat. Even through the cotton that sits heavy in your head, muffling the roar of the river and the others as they draw close once again. “It - I - won’t be easy.”

“I don’t want easy,” Jaskier says, leaning forward, cupping your cheek gently, slowly, testing the waters, “not if it means I can’t have you. I’m not easy, either, or so Geralt tells me. When he’s speaking to me.”

It startles a laugh out of you, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, and Jaskier’s lips curve into something sweetly pleased. He rubs a thumb across your cheekbone.

You push into him, catch his lips with yours, and he makes a noise before cupping your face in his large hands, pulling you closer. He kisses the breath right out of you, and for a moment - he kisses the fears from you too, teases them out of you with his tongue. You pull back panting, one hand knotted in the damp strands of his chestnut hair, and he coaxes you back to him. 

He licks into your mouth with fervor, shifts so that he can pull you into his lap, and your chest is heaving as you press against him, as the cool river water starts to seep through your bodice. Jaskier is warm against you, and hungry in a way you didn’t think someone could be for you, not like the other men that have tumbled you. You kiss him until one of the children shrieks in the distance.

“Shit,” you say, pulling back, but Jaskier doesn’t let you go far. He presses another soft kiss against your lips before he lets you go so that you can fix your hiked skirts. He picks up the crown with his deft fingers, and sets it on your head.

The crown, you find, fits perfectly.

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally an anon request on my [tumblr](https://owillofthewisps.tumblr.com) that took me ages to actually do (sorry anon!). 
> 
> i grew up thinking that most people did river fortunes (which is what my family calls them but i'm sure there is an actual name for it) where you send a flower crown down the river to predict your romantic life. apparently, this is actually more specific than i thought it was. you live and you learn.
> 
> hopefully this is close to what anon wanted bc much of my life is ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ and hoping for the goddamn best.


End file.
